Assef Shawkat

Assef Shawkat (15 January 1950-18 July 2012) was Deputy Minister of Defense of Syria from 2011 to 2012.

Biography
Assef Shawkat was born to an Alawite Shia family in the village of Al-Madeleh in Tartous, Syria on 15 January 1950. Shawkat studied law and history at the University of Damascus but joined the Syrian Arab Army in the late 1970s. By 1982 he was an officer in the Defense Companies, who committed the Hama Massacre against rebels who fought against President Hafez al-Assad.

He married Bushra al-Assad, the daughter of Hafez, and became an influential member of the government of the Syrian Arab Republic. Shawkat was made the Deputy Minister of Defense of Syria in 2011, and he was killed in a bomb assassination on a meeting of President Bashar al-Assad's military crisis team during the Syrian Civil War on 18 July 2012 alongside Dawoud Rajiha and Hasan Turkmani. His death was a blow to the Syrian government, as he was a key member of the military crisis team and a man with many valuable skills.